"Can you actually hide a whole family?" Garion asked.

"It's never been that big a family," Wolf said. "It seems, for one reason or another, to be a single, unbroken line - no cousins or uncles or that kind of thing. It's not all that hard to hide a man and wife with a single child. We've been doing it for hundreds of years now. We've hidden them in Tolnedra, Riva, Cherek, Drasnia - all kinds of places. They've lived simple lives - artisans mostly, sometimes ordinary peasants - the kind of people nobody would ever look at twice. Anyway, everything had gone well until about twenty years ago. We moved your father, Geran, from a place in Arendia to a little village in eastern Sendaria, about sixty leagues southeast of Darine, up in the mountains. Geran was a stonecutter - didn't I tell you that once before?"

Garion nodded. "A long time ago," he said. "You said you liked him and used to visit him once in a while. Was my mother a Sendar then?"

"No," Wolf said. "Ildera as an Algar, actually - the second daughter of a Clan Chief. Your Aunt and I introduced her to Geran whenthey were about the right age. The usual sort of thing happened, and they got married. You were born a year or so afterward."

"When was the fire?" Garion asked.

"I'm getting to that," Wolf said. One of the enemies of your family had been looking for your people for a long time."

"How long?"

"Hundreds of years, actually."

"That means he was a sorcerer, too, doesn't it?" Garion asked. "I mean, only sorcerers live for that long, don't they?"

"He has certain capabilities along those linesm" Wolf admitted. "Sorcerer is a misleading term, though. It's not the sort of thing we actually call ourselves. Other people do, but we don't exactly think of it that way. It's a convenient term for people who don't really understand what it's all about. Anyway, your Aunt and I happened to be away when this enemy finally tracked down Geran and Ildera. He came to their house very early one morning while they were still sleeping and he sealed up the doors and windows. And then he set it on fire."

"I thought you said the house was made of stone."

"It was," Wolf said, "but you can make stone burn if you really want to. The fire just has to be hotter, that's all. Geran and Ildera knew there was no way they could get out of the burning building, but Geran managed to knock one of the stones out of the wall, and Ildera pushed you out through the hole. The one who started the fire was waiting for that. He picked you up and started out of the village. We could never be sure exactly what he had in mind - either he was going to kill you, or maybe he was going to keep you for some reason of his own. At any rate, that's when I got there. I put out the fire, but Geran and Ildera were already dead. Then I went after the one who'd stolen you."

"Did you kill him?" Garion demanded fiercely.

"I try not to do that more than I have to," Wolf said. "It disrupts the natural course of events too much. I had some other ideas at the time - much more unpleasant than killing." His eyes were icy. "As it turned out though, I never got the chance. He threw you at me - you were only a baby - and I had to try to catch you. It gave him time to get away. I left you with Polgara and then I went looking for your enemy. I haven't been able to find him yet, though."

"I'm glad you haven't," Garion said.

Wolf looked a little suprised at that.

"When I get older, I'm going to find him," Garion said, "I think I ought to be the one who pays him back for what he did, don't you?"

Wolf looked at him gravely. "It could be dangerous," he said.

"I don't care. What's his name?"

"I think that maybe I better wait a while before I tell you that," Wolf said. "I don't want you jumping into something before you're ready."

"But you will tell me?"

"When the time comes."

"It's very important, Grandfather"

"Yes," Wolf said. "I can see that."

"Do you promise?"

"If you insist. And if I don't, I'm sure your Aunt will. She feels the same way you do."

"Don't you?"

"I'm much older," Wolf said. "I see things a little differently."

"I'm not that old yet," Garion said. "I won't be able to do the kind of things you'd do, so I'll have to settle for just killing him." He stood up and began to pace back and forth, a rage boiling in him.

"I don't suppose I'll be able to talk you out of this," Wolf said, "but I really think you're going to feel differently about it after it's over."

"Not likely," Garion said, still pacing.

"We'll see," Wolf said.

"Thank you for telling me, Grandfather," Garion said.

"You'd have found out sooner or later anyway," the old man said, "and it's better that I tell you than for you to get a distorted account from someone else."

"You mean Aunt Pol?"

"Polgara wouldn't deliberately lie to you," Wolf said, "but she sees things in a much more personal way than I do. Sometimes that colors her perceptions. I try to take the long view of things. I could take - under the circumstances."

Garion looked at the old man whose white hair and beard seemed somehow luminous in the morning sun. "What's it like to live forever, Grandfather?" He asked.

"I don't know," Wolf said. "I haven't lived forever."

"You know what I mean."

"The quality of life isn't much different," Wolf said. "We all live as long as we need to. It just happened that that I have something to do that's taken a very long time." He stood up abruptly. "This conversation's taken a gloomy turn," he said.

"This thing that we're doing is very important, isn't it, Grandfather?" Garion asked.

"It's the most important thing in the world right now," Wolf said.

"I'm afraid I'm not going to be very much help," Garion said.

Wolf looked at him gravely for a moment and then put one arm round his shoulders. "I think you may be suprised about that before it's all over, Garion," he said.

And then they turned and looked out over the prow of the ship at the snowy coast of Cherek sliding by on their right as the sailors rowed the ship south towards Camaar and whatever lay beyond.